Modality use in joint attention between hearing parents and deaf children.

The present study examined differences in modality use during episodes of joint attention between hearing parent-hearing child dyads and hearing parent-deaf child dyads. Hearing children were age-matched to deaf children. Dyads were video recorded in a free play session with analyses focused on uni- and multimodality use during joint attention episodes.

Infants' preference for native audiovisual speech dissociated from congruency preference.

Although infant speech perception in often studied in isolated modalities, infants' experience with speech is largely multimodal (i.e., speech sounds they hear are accompanied by articulating faces).

Disentangling the influence of salience and familiarity on infant word learning: methodological advances.

The initial stages of language learning involve a critical interaction between infants' environmental experience and their developing brains. The past several decades of research have produced important behavioral evidence of the many factors influencing this process, both on the part of the child and on the part of the environment that the child is in. The application of neurophysiological techniques to the study of early development has been augmenting these findings at a rapid pace.